The darkness has been
removed from the face of the deep, its waters have been distributed
in due proportions above and below the expanse; the lower waters
have retired and given place to the emerging land, and the
wasteness of the land thus exposed to view has begun to be adorned
with the living forms of a new vegetation. It only remains to
remove the "void" by peopling this now fair and fertile world with
the animal kingdom. For this purpose the Great Designer begins a
new cycle of supernatural operations.

Genesis 1:14,1514 "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:"

Lights. -The work of the fourth day has much in common
with that of the first day, which, indeed it continues and
completes. Both deal with light, and with dividing between light
and darkness, or day and night. "Let there be." They agree also in
choosing the word "be," to express the nature of the operation
which is here performed. But the fourth day advances on the first
day. It brings into view the luminaries, the light radiators, the
source, while the first only indicated the stream. It contemplates
the far expanse, while the first regards only the near.

For signs and for
seasons, and for days and years. -
While the first day refers only to the day and its twofold
division, the fourth refers to signs, seasons, days, and years.
These lights are for "signs." They are to serve as the great
natural chronometer of man, having its three units, - the day, the
month, and the year - and marking the divisions of time, not only
for agricultural and social purposes, but also for meeting out the
eras of human history and the cycles of natural science. They are
signs of place as well as of time - topometers, if we may use the
term. By them the mariner has learned to mark the latitude and
longitude of his ship, and the astronomer to determine with any
assignable degree of precision the place as well as the time of the
planetary orbs of heaven. The "seasons" are the natural seasons of
the year, and the set times for civil and sacred purposes which man
has attached to special days and years in the revolution of
time.

Since the word "day" is
a key to the explanation of the first day's work, so is the word
"year" to the interpretation of that of the fourth. Since the cause
of the distinction of day and night is the diurnal rotation of the
earth on its axis in conjunction with a fixed source of light,
which streamed in on the scene of creation as soon as the natural
hinderance was removed, so the vicissitudes of the year are owing,
along with these two conditions, to the annual revolution of the
earth in its orbit round the sun, together with the obliquity of
the ecliptic. To the phenomena so occasioned are to be added
incidental variations arising from the revolution of the moon round
the earth, and the small modifications caused by the various other
bodies of the solar system. All these celestial phenomena come out
from the artless simplicity of the sacred narrative as observable
facts on the fourth day of that new creation. From the beginning of
the solar system the earth must, from the nature of things, have
revolved around the sun. But whether the rate of velocity was ever
changed, or the obliquity of the ecliptic was now commenced or
altered, we do not learn from this record.

Genesis 1:15 -
"And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so."

To shine upon the
earth. -The first day spreads the
shaded gleam of light over the face of the deep. The fourth day
unfolds to the eye the lamps of heaven, hanging in the expanse of
the skies, and assigns to them the office of "shining upon the
earth." A threefold function is thus attributed to the celestial
orbs - to divide day from night, to define time and place, and to
shine on the earth. The word of command is here very full, running
over two verses, with the exception of the little clause, "and it
was so," stating the result.

Genesis 1:16-19

This result is fully
particularized in the next three verses. This word, "made,"
corresponds to the word "be" in the command, and indicates the
disposition and adjustment to a special purpose of things
previously existing.

Genesis 1:16
"And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also."

The two great lights.
-The well-known ones, great in
relation to the stars, as seen from the earth.

The great light,
-in comparison with the little light.
The stars, from man's point of view, are insignificant, except in
regard to number (Genesis 15:5).

Genesis 1:17
"And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,"

God gave them.
-The absolute giving of the heavenly
bodies in their places was performed at the time of their actual
creation. The relative giving here spoken of is what would appear
to an earthly spectator, when the intervening veil of clouds would
be dissolved by the divine agency, and the celestial luminaries
would stand forth in all their dazzling splendor.

Genesis 1:18
"And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good."

To rule. -From their lofty eminence they regulate the
duration and the business of each period. The whole is inspected
and approved as before.

Now let it be remembered
that the heavens were created at the absolute beginning of things
recorded in the first verse, and that they included all other
things except the earth. Hence, according to this document, the
sun, moon, and stars were in existence simultaneously with our
planet. This gives simplicity and order to the whole narrative.
Light comes before us on the first and on the fourth day. Now, as
two distinct causes of a common effect would be unphilosophical and
unnecessary, we must hold the one cause to have been in existence
on these two days. But we have seen that the one cause of the day
and of the year is a fixed source of radiating light in the sky,
combined with the diurnal and annual motions of the earth. Thus,
the recorded preexistence of the celestial orbs is consonant with
the presumptions of reason. The making or reconstitution of the
atmosphere admits their light so far that the alternations of day
and night can be discerned. The making of the lights of heaven, or
the display of them in a serene sky by the withdrawal of that
opaque canopy of clouds that still enveloped the dome above, is
then the work of the fourth day.

All is now plain and
intelligible. The heavenly bodies become the lights of the earth,
and the distinguishers not only of day and night, but of seasons
and years, of times and places. They shed forth their unveiled
glories and salutary potencies on the budding, waiting land. How
the higher grade of transparency in the aerial region was effected,
we cannot tell; and, therefore, we are not prepared to explain why
it is accomplished on the fourth day, and not sooner. But from its
very position in time, we are led to conclude that the constitution
of the expanse, the elevation of a portion of the waters of the
deep in the form of vapor, the collection of the sub-aerial water
into seas, and the creation of plants out of the reeking soil, must
all have had an essential part, both in retarding until the fourth
day, and in then bringing about the dispersion of the clouds and
the clearing of the atmosphere. Whatever remained of hinderance to
the outshining of the sun, moon, and stars on the land in all their
native splendor, was on this day removed by the word of divine
power.

Now is the approximate
cause of day and night made palpable to the observation. Now are
the heavenly bodies made to be signs of time and place to the
intelligent spectator on the earth, to regulate seasons, days,
months, and years, and to be the luminaries of the world. Now,
manifestly, the greater light rules the day, as the lesser does the
night. The Creator has withdrawn the curtain, and set forth the
hitherto undistinguishable brilliants of space for the illumination
of the land and the regulation of the changes which diversify its
surface. This bright display, even if it could have been effected
on the first day with due regard to the forces of nature already in
operation, was unnecessary to the unseeing and unmoving world of
vegetation, while it was plainly requisite for the seeing,
choosing, and moving world of animated nature which was about to be
called into existence on the following days.

The terms employed for
the objects here brought forward - "lights, the great light, the
little light, the stars;" for the mode of their manifestation, "be,
make, give;" and for the offices they discharge, "divide, rule,
shine, be for signs, seasons, days, years" - exemplify the
admirable simplicity of Scripture, and the exact adaptation of its
style to the unsophisticated mind of primeval man. We have no
longer, indeed, the naming of the various objects, as on the former
days; probably because it would no longer be an important source of
information for the elucidation of the narrative. But we have more
than an equivalent for this in variety of phrase. The several words
have been already noticed: it only remains to make some general
remarks.

(1) The sacred writer
notes only obvious results, such as come before the eye of the
observer, and leaves the secondary causes, their modes of
operation, and their less obtrusive effects, to scientific inquiry.
The progress of observation is from the foreground to the
background of nature, from the physical to the metaphysical, and
from the objective to the subjective. Among the senses, too, the
eye is the most prominent observer in the scenes of the six days.
Hence, the "lights," they "shine," they are for "signs" and "days,"
which are in the first instance objects of vision. They are
"given," held or shown forth in the heavens. Even "rule" has
probably the primitive meaning to be over. Starting thus with the
visible and the tangible, the Scripture in its successive
communications advance with us to the inferential, the intuitive,
the moral, the spiritual, the divine.

(2) The sacred writer
also touches merely the heads of things in these scenes of
creation, without condescending to minute particulars or intending
to be exhaustive. Hence, many actual incidents and intricacies of
these days are left to the well-regulated imagination and sober
judgment of the reader. To instance such omissions, the moon is as
much of her time above the horizon during the day as during the
night. But she is not then the conspicuous object in the scene, or
the full-orbed reflector of the solar beams, as she is during the
night. Here the better part is used to mark the whole. The tidal
influence of the great lights, in which the moon plays the chief
part, is also unnoticed. Hence, we are to expect very many
phenomena to be altogether omitted, though interesting and
important in themselves, because they do not come within the
present scope of the narrative.

(3) The point from which
the writer views the scene is never to be forgotten, if we would
understand these ancient records. He stands on earth. He uses his
eyes as the organ of observation. He knows nothing of the visual
angle, of visible as distinguishable from tangible magnitude, of
relative in comparison with absolute motion on the grand scale: he
speaks the simple language of the eye. Hence, his earth is the meet
counterpart of the heavens. His sun and moon are great, and all the
stars are a very little thing. Light comes to be, to him, when it
reaches the eye. The luminaries are held forth in the heavens, when
the mist between them and the eye is dissolved.

(4) Yet, though not
trained to scientific thought or speech, this author has the eye of
reason open as well as that of sense. It is not with him the
science of the tangible, but the philosophy of the intuitive, that
reduces things to their proper dimensions. He traces not the
secondary cause, but ascends at one glance to the great first
cause, the manifest act and audible behest of the Eternal Spirit.
This imparts a sacred dignity to his style, and a transcendent
grandeur to his conceptions. In the presence of the high and lofty
One that inhabiteth eternity, all things terrestrial and celestial
are reduced to a common level. Man in intelligent relation with God
comes forth as the chief figure on the scene of terrestrial
creation. The narrative takes its commanding position as the
history of the ways of God with man. The commonest primary facts of
ordinary observation, when recorded in this book, assume a supreme
interest as the monuments of eternal wisdom and the heralds of the
finest and broadest generalizations of a consecrated science. The
very words are instinct with a germinant philosophy, and prove
themselves adequate to the expression of the loftiest speculations
of the eloquent mind.